2. Two Truths
TWO
TWO TRUTHS
? NOVAHALL ACADEMY, CONCORDIA?
Later, none of them could agree on who spoke first.
Elena would insist it was Jere. That he appeared at her elbow with a drink she hadn't asked for, and that everything after was his fault entirely.
Jere would insist it was Elena. That she'd already claimed the best vantage point in the room and he was simply drawn to her competence.
Reyna, when pressed, would smile at them both with an expression that meant you're ridiculous but I wouldn't trade you for anything in this universe, and let them argue.
And boy did they argue. They argued about it for years, decades even. Long after it stopped mattering and became the kind of you tell around a fireplace or with your grandchildren on your lap, worn soft at the edges and cherished, not for its accuracy, but because you had a story to tell.
But this is what actually happened.
Novahall's mess hall was loud that first evening.
With it being orientation week, the new cadets brought about the particular brand of chaos with several hundred young beings from a dozen different species, and were then all crammed into one room and told to introduce themselves. Someone had organized an icebreaker.
It was terrible. But, when exactly are icebreakers not terrible? It is simply a universal constant that transcends biology, homeworld, or the number of limbs one possesses.
Reyna Solas sat at a table near the back of the room and watched, barely fifty and absolutely certain of almost nothing except that she did not want to be here.
She wasn't hiding but instead was being strategic.
There was a difference, and if the difference was invisible to everyone else in the room, that was kind of the point.
The table she'd chosen had sightlines to every exit, with the wall behind her meaning nobody could approach without her knowing.
Even the noise of the mess hall provided cover because, when a room was this loud, nobody really noticed one more person not talking.
She took the opportunity to scan the room undetected, considering the other cadets.
She watched a Brontari who had just announced that she could hold her breath for forty minutes to use as her icebreaker.
The coordinator thought this was gold, beaming and basking in the sheer thrill that participation was happening in the group.
Reyna saw that everyone else surrounding the Brontari looked as though they were realizing they were losing the ability to get out of this exercise entirely, and they weren’t happy.
She sat and wondered if forty minutes of holding one's breath would be enough to outlast the icebreaker itself.
Maybe that was the Brontari's motivation after all.
Then she saw a Noethan near the refreshment table who was explaining to his group that his species' greeting involved sustained eye contact for a full ninety seconds.
To demonstrate, he looked over at the cadet directly on his right.
After only a handful of seconds, the cadet started backing away, shrinking at the consistent scrutiny.
Reyna couldn't blame him, ninety seconds of prolonged eye contact, especially with a species whose eyes specifically shimmered, was quite intimidating.
It didn't really seem to be the cadet's cup of tea.
Across the hall, Reyna watched a Droven cadet standing with military precision, watching the entire proceedings of group after group with a focused attention to catalog potential threats. She watched his pale eyes move in sweeps, respecting the technique.
As she contemplated leaving now and whether she'd be noticed or not, or if her escape could be hidden by the general chaos of the room, when her eyes caught on someone approaching on her right. At the sight of the individual, her careful disinterest faltered completely.
This was another Kaelari, her very own species.
The woman looked about Reyna's age, if only slightly older, and settled upon leaning against the back wall just to the left of the table Reyna sat, a confidence in her posture of never, ever doubting her place in any room she'd ever entered.
She oozed what seemed like generations of strategy, training, and certainty, radiating off of her like heat off an engine casing.
Reyna noticed she wasn't participating in the icebreaker either, but where Reyna's absence was about protective invisibility, this woman's was about elevation.
She wasn't hiding from the room, she was simply staking it out.
Reyna noticed she was watching, assessing, and sorting people with the practiced efficiency to read rooms in the same way that Reyna had been taught to survive them.
Her markings were steady and controlled, but they weren't gold like Reyna's.
Every Kaelari she'd ever met held their markings at some variation of gold at baseline.
But this woman's markings ran violet. A deep, rich purple that traced across her face and neck like layered constellations.
Not to mention, they were doing something Reyna had never seen.
They were pulsing. A soft, rhythmic glow, not flickering with emotion that all Kaelari were taught to suppress, but just alive, like the markings themselves were breathing.
Reyna watched the woman's hand close into a fist at her side, but she still couldn't look away. There was something about her that was pulling Reyna's attention in a way that was slightly unsettling, but even more infuriating, she couldn't explain.
It wasn't the confidence. Reyna had met plenty of confident people before, sometimes so confident it bordered on cocky.
But this was something else. Maybe it was the way her eyes moved, or the absolute precision of her attention, as if mathematical.
Reyna had no doubt that she was looking for the same things Reyna was, but from the opposite side of the room and for entirely different reasons.
Stop staring. You're going to get noticed.
She looked down at her hands in her lap. But only seconds later, she looked back up.
The woman was still watching the room but she still hadn't seen Reyna. Or, perhaps the better assumption was that, if she had, she'd looked her over, didn't find any threat, and moved on.
Reyna didn't know why that bothered her.
A sudden sound pulled her attention away from the woman across the room.
A voice, bright and close, full of too much cheer for the first day at an academy.
It came from a Qorrathi that materialized at the Kaelari woman's elbow.
He was taller than either of them by more than a head, and had that kind of open, expressive face that seemed incapable of hiding a single thought that flittered through his head.
He was holding two drinks, handing one to the woman without asking.
"This is terrible, right?" he said with complete sincerity. Reyna could hear him clearly from where she sat, as though the mess hall noise was parting around his voice. Reyna realized he had one of those voices that seemed to carry without even trying.
"I keep waiting for them to make us do trust falls," he continued, grinning at the other Kaelari woman with an expression that made it almost impossible to be annoyed at a stranger for handing you a drink you didn't need.
Almost.
"Do you think they will? Because I have to tell you, I have very strong feelings about those."
The Kaelari woman almost laughed. Reyna saw the crack in the reaction quickly seal up again.
"If we start doing trust falls with this group, I think the Brontari might crush someone," the woman said.
The Qorrathi's face lit up as if she'd said the most brilliant thing in the history of organized speech.
"That's EXACTLY what I was thinking! The logistics alone.
" He gestured broadly with his free hand, nearly hitting a passing cadet.
"I mean, do they pair by weight class? Who spots who?
Or do the Brontaris just spot each other?
Do they even consider factoring in species with tails?
Nobody's, not a one, thought this through. "
"Nobody needed to," the woman responded. "That's the beauty of said 'trust fall.' Pure faith, zero planning."
Reyna's chest stirred at those words. Pure faith, zero planning. She'd never been given the luxury of either. But, even still, she had to admit, the Qorrathi had a point about the logistics. The Brontari trust fall alone would require structural reinforcement in the flooring, the walls, the—.
"Pure faith, zero planning," the Qorrathi repeated, delighted. "That's the Coalition training motto. I'm Jerel, by the way. But my friends call me Jere."
My friends. He'd known the woman for, what, thirty seconds? And the word friends had already landed between them like it belonged there.
Reyna watched him say it, but immediately felt as though she were watching a magic trick. As though you were aware that something had just happened but not entirely sure how.
"Elena," the woman said.
"Elena." He nodded, but then his gaze shifted, following some invisible line across the mess hall, until it circled back around and landed, with an uncanny accuracy, directly on her.
Reyna went absolutely still. Like, not breathing kind of still, which was more still than she already was, making it a feat all on its own.
He'd seen her. Without a doubt, the Qorrathi with the open face and the two drinks and the word friends tumbling out of his mouth like an avalanche was looking right at her.
And his expression wasn't like the Elena woman, assessing or curious or calculating.
It was just warm. Warm, easy-going, and totally impossible to deflect.
"That one there, she looks like she'd rather be anywhere else," he said to Elena, but not unkindly. "Same as us."
He was moving before Elena even had a chance to respond.